Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dream Theater
Label: Roadrunner Records
Release: 2013
Running time: 68:05
Rating: 4.5/5
Dream Theater, the progressive titans who, with their shocking originality at the turn of the eighties into the nineties, threw the doors wide open for the later flowering of the progressive metal genre, are sticking to their tried-and-true formula even in their mature years. After a two-year gap, they’ve released a new studio album. This time it’s titled »Dream Theater«. Even though titles like that usually go to debut albums, it’s more than obvious that the band picked it to make one thing clear: what the new album delivers is still 100% Dream Theater, even without Mike Portnoy in the lineup, the crew is 100% consolidated and tighter than ever. And also this (the most important thing in all of it): Mike Mangini can play just like Mike Portnoy whenever the desire and need arise. A heap of rollings in the transitional passages of the new record’s songs proves exactly that, among other things. That you can put an equals sign between Mangini and Portnoy too, if the situation calls for it.
If nothing else, with »A Dramatic Turn of Events« (2011) we finally got, after a long while, a Dream Theater album that’s friendlier to the ears in terms of delivering more easily digestible arrangements, the kind where the melody sticks in your ears longer. Luckily, Jordan Rudess has calmed down completely in the beastly soloing that, on »Black Clouds and Silver Linnings«, with the whole »shrill« force of an overflowing ocean of notes, tore at the listener’s head and fragmented the desired compactness of the songs into prime factors. So the album »Dream Theater« also strikes a very successful middle path between complexity and seductive listenability, where the band once again leaves room for a clearly defined lead melody to take primacy over the other building blocks of Dream Theater’s music.
You won’t believe it, but the elementary quality of a proper guitar phrase, which is otherwise a staple of the heavy metal universe, as presented in the new Dream Theater song Behind the Veil, feels especially sweet. For them it’s even refreshing, even though at its core it’s borrowing something already invented. A contradiction that ignites! It’s nice that, after all their covers of classics from Iron Maiden to Metallica, Dream Theater have finally found some room to spotlight the elementary guitar phrase in their own authorship. Something that, in the right doses within the arrangements, had been increasingly missed on their studio albums from 1999 onward. Then again, on »Train of Thought« (2003) they even overdid this »crazy shredding« element. The flower of artistic contrast on the album is Surrender To Reason. It’s an excellent mix of acoustic forms (the intro), a warmly produced organic sound carried by Rudess’s »Hammond-like« tone, which evokes the impulses of classic Kansas works (the verse), and a catchy, melodic chorus hook, which leads to the realization that Dream Theater have once again fantastically flirted with the look and feel of their early studio creations. I can only say one thing. Finally, boys!
Put simply, the album »Dream Theater« has superbly caught the balance between what these guys always love doing most and what reality forces on them, which demands logic and compact song construction. Once again there are moments on the album where the band sails off into extreme solo juggling at the edge of the abyss of musical chaos, only to catch itself on the right foot the next instant with a sharpened sense of following the melody and bring the situation back into a tasteful balance of expression that’s a constant pleasure to consume. As mentioned.
The opening “cinematic” intro, just under three minutes, is a proven staple from past works. Next comes the cranked-up, motif-rich The Enemy Inside, followed by The Looking Glass, which is the first herald of what we were just talking about. The opening motif shoots »Dream Theater« back to the early days of their output, and it’s no exaggeration to call it a throwaway from the album »Images And Words«, Petrucci even doubles the harmonies in thirds as he emphasizes the melody, Rudess holds up an atmospheric backdrop with the keyboards, and LaBrie’s vocal finally once again expresses itself in full passion and payoff. The Bigger Picture and especially Along for the Ride are beautiful songs, walking a great line between a masterful dosing of improvisational trickery, hard-hitting rhythmic turns that nobody else in this universe can pull together, and effectively working melodies. At the start of its fifth minute, The Bigger Picture carries the classic closing of a motif (with a launchpad into a new motif), deliberately produced and played Queen-style (that typical, teasing »Queen-esque«). The Bigger Picture carries one of the most memorable choruses of the new Dream Theater album. And if you had to pick a radio-friendly song from the new album, in an edited version it could surely be Along for the Ride, which hasn’t happened since the days of »Octavarium« and its song I Walk Beside You. The track loaded with an escalation of Dream Theater’s unimprovable force, with fiery improvisations traded between Petrucci and Rudess, is embodied on the new album by the unbridled progressive steamroller Enigma Machine. No holding back here. Here there’s only play aimed at the absolute extreme, the kind only Dream Theater’s ultrasonic neo-classicism can deliver. But watch out. It’s a more demanding song, thoroughly fragmented. A »continuum fingerboard« is allowed here too, along with all of Jordan Rudess’s other sonic trickery. The track works great within the album as a whole, because despite its deliberate fragmentation and difficulty it doesn’t stick out, being slotted in among listenable songs that are far more melodically sustainable in their arrangements.
Dream Theater took a similar approach this time as on the album »Octavarium«. They saved the most demanding and most complex composition on the album »Dream Theater« for the very tail (what tail? let’s say the last third of the new release instead). It’s the 22-minute epic Illumination Theory, which will delight the most demanding fans of the band. Let me mention that at a good seven minutes in, the song starts to “break” more substantially in a progressive way, evoking the old-school retro development forms of good old rock, the kind Yes once created in the days of the album »Relayer« or »T.F.T.O. cerebrality«. In short, another giant epic that offers a dynamic, moody ride on the crest of huge waves of Dream Theater’s creative spirit (in its mature era) and tastefully fuses complexity with listenability.
The album is excellent from start to finish! And it carries a deeply meaningful title, »Dream Theater«. It embodies literally everything Dream Theater have created so far. At the same time, it’s a showcase of the exceptional shape of the new lineup with Mangini behind the drums, who delivers an even more relaxed, even more vivid and even more breathtaking drum performance compared to his usual excellence, which he first showed in Dream Theater on the album »A Dramatic Turn Of Events« (2011).
Only one thing left. Get yourself this album and chew it over thoroughly until February 2014, when Dream Theater come to Ljubljana for a new concert. The chorus hooks of absolutely all the songs will stick in your ears this time. Those of us who’d been waiting for the band to make an album of unique balance between complexity and melodic catchiness finally got it with the album »Dream Theater«. An album that, after all the mileage and all the musical horizons they’ve shown, and after we’d desperately said countless times that Dream Theater had said everything they had to say artistically, turned out brilliantly for the band. An album of true Dream Theater art aesthetics. All the building blocks are equally exposed, none of them overshadowed by the dominance of another. That makes it all the lovelier to realize we can once again enjoy the sensual performance of James LaBrie, who until now has all too often been “choked” amid all the muscle-flexing of the band’s instrumental heroes. LaBrie literally shines in his vocal performance on this album!
Lineup
James LaBrie – vocals, backing vocals
John Petrucci – guitar backing vocals
Jordan Rudess – keyboards, backing vocals
John Myung – bass guitar
Mike Mangini – drums
Production
John Petrucci
Track list
01. False Awakening Suite
I. Sleep Paralysis
II. Night Terrors
III. Lucid Dream
02. The Enemy Inside
03. The Looking Glass
04. Enigma Machine
05. The Bigger Picture
06. Behind The Veil
07. Surrender To Reason
08. Along For The Ride
09. Illumination Theory
I. Paradoxe de la Lumière Noire
II. Live, Die, Kill
III. The Embracing Circle
IV. The Pursuit of Truth
V. Surrender, Trust & Passion
